Fact: Barbarian hill giants have terrible will saves.

After returning from the medusa slaying extravaganza, the party decides to go handle a growing giant problem (medium problem?) to the northwest.

3/14: Felix scries the crap out of the giants’ camp. Sees 4 watchtowers, a castle(?), a plantation, a mine, and a tunnel (escape route, probably). Sees giants, ogres, wolves, human slaves. Also an undead haunted area at the northern end. For some reason, he can’t see inside the main building.

3/15:
Felix, Malcolm, Nolan, and Gruff get on Felix’s summoned phantom steeds, ride to near the giant area.
Elbion has stuff to take care of in town, so he leaves later in the day.

3/16:
After an hour of planning, a plan is made. First, cut off the giant from their resources (food + metal). Stealthily take out nearby many watchtowers, possibly charming some enemies found there to join the cause. Then head to the main building and take out the leader.
They decide to start without Elbion (since he’s not so good at the whole “being stealthy” thing).

Felix makes the team invisible. They approach the southwest watchtower from downwind. Then he takes Malcolm and Gruff through dimension door to the top of the tower. They quickly charm the giant sentry, preventing him from sounding the alarm, as well as the ogre guard at the entrance below and the boss of the tower. Nolan sprints in and charms one of the 2 dire wolf guards. Everyone then gangs up and kills the leader of the tower.
They leave some of the charmed enemies behind to keep up appearances then head over to the farm area.

Felix and Malcolm once again do their stealthy charming, Nolan snipes from the cornfields, and Gruff charges in. This doesn’t take very long. They send the human workers off to their homes to the south.
Party heads over to the nearby manor with 2 giants, one carrying a dead ogre. Malcolm sneaks in from behind them. The ogre is thrown at the enemies in the front room, but intsead takes out one of the internal walls. At the time, Gruff bashes in the back wall of the building, revealing the enemy leader “[name missing] the Whispering”. Nolan snipes a wolf through a back window. Malcolm and the giants take out the enemies in the front room.
The whispering tells Gruff to attack his allies, so he goes after Felix. Nolan keeps shooting into the house.
Then the Whispering goes to help out against Felix knows he’s in trouble, so he dimensionally shifts into the building (and throws a fireball back out, I think). The whispering then convinces Nolan to also attack his allies. Nolan moves into position and starts shooting at Felix, too. The Whispering heads back into the building to attack Felix. Felix gets thrown through one of the side walls of the building. The building was already pretty unstable. This collapses the whole thing on top of the 2 remaining wolves and the Whispering.
Felix once again gets hit by something falling on his head and passes out.
With the Whispering dead, Gruff and Nolan return to normal. Nolan runs over the Felix and takes care of his wound, Malcolm uses his curing wand a few times.
With the manor destroyed and the slaves freed, the giants no longer have a renewable source of food.

The northwest watchtower is on the way to the mines so they decide to take it over next.
Felix kills all sound around the alarm horn. Malcolm gets the guard up top to join the team for a while. Nolan makes the area plants grab on to the guards at the entrance.
With the situation greatly to their advantage, Elbion finally shows up out of nowhere and takes out the ogre+wolf pets.
The party then easily finishes off the rest of the guard and heads over to the mines.

The cave is full of ogres and grimlock workers. Felix warps the normal bunch to the back section of the cave. The ensuing fight is a pretty straightforward smackdown of weaker enemies.

The party prepares for the final assault on the main building. Their new buddies tell them about “Derikar the Terrible”, a barbarian giant who often kills his foes with a single attack (CR 14).
Felix summons a archon hound(?) and gives him instructions to attack Derikar and send a message about how the fight goes. (Metagaming: they find out that “Terrible” enemies auto-threat.)

They put as much protection on each other, mainly Elbion, and gather all their charmed minions and teleport to the middle of the main room, hoping to catch Derikar by surprise and avoid getting brutally murdered with an across to the face/neck/body. They know that if they can’t find a way to take down Derikar quickly, Felix will need to teleport the party far away. Even in that case, someone may die.
Nolan fires a Sleep Arrow, but the giant leader stays awake. Felix tries to phantasmally kill Derikar but fails (but still hurts him a little). Malcolm magically suggests Derikar to throw his axe away. Malcolm looks like a smart/cool dude, so he’s got no problem disarming himself. Gruff and minions charge in and attack the giant’s minions. Derikar punches Gruff in the face, almost killing him. Then Elbion charges in on his horse and smites the half-crap out of Derikar.
Nolan launches his 3 adamantine arrows for moderate damage. Then Felix finishes off Derikar with some sort of spell or something, I think.
With the leader taken care of, the party still has to deal with the 7 ballistas on the roof as well as the remaining giant forces.
As they head up the stairs or towards the entrance and start bashing the remaining enemies, Nolan has the sudden urge to start killing his friends, again, and starts shooting at Felix again. (Probably some subconscious resentment from the whole deal with the shadow demon, plus the whole “elves suck” thing.) Fortunately, Felix has several fake copies of himself and Nolan hit only the fakes.
Felix searches for the invisible cause of Nolan’s betrayal and spots an ogre mage, invisible, above Derikar’s seat. The mage tries blasting the team with a fireball.
Elbion, seeing this, rides down the stairs and leaps up, quickly killing the mage.

They then go on to finish off the remaining giants, ogres, and wolves, just in time to man the ballistas to shoot down the defenders of the remaining 2 watchtowers who were responding to the alarms from the main building.

Then they go back home to spend their new-found wealth and to train for a few months.

The unnamed legion, the last hope again a reality-warper, goes back in time and accidentally gains a few members who had been frozen in time. Then they bring them back forward in time a bit. Yep.

Party trains in Willowfields for several weeks.
Elbion focuses entirely on training, becoming even more ridiculously good at destroying evil, or at least a few times a day.
Thanks to policies set in place by the faction in power (I forget if it is the Black Tower or the Grey Fox, it wasn’t made very clear to me as I wasn’t paying attention), Felix spends most of the time creating magical items at a greatly reduced price.
Malcolm learns all about the joys of city politics. Also creates a false identity which manages to find a supplier to get many things at slightly reduced prices.
Apparently, someone tried to assassinate someone. Also, one of the Black Tower’s higher-ups defected to the Nobles.
Nolan learns of a secret ranger guild which may welcome him if he brings back proof of his hunting mastery.

March:
Embers has grown. A small hill giant force has popped up to the northwest of Willowfields and is enslaving people. Party uses some of their influence to increase Embers’ and Willowfield’s resources.

3/9: Party is ready to go, but Nolan has correctly predicted tornadoey weather.
3/10: Party is bored. Decides to go kill the Medusa they discovered way back in Part 2-1, since killing medusas is kind of a cool thing for young people to do these days. Also middle-aged half-elves.

3/12: Party gets to the ruins early in the day, all ready to go kill a Medusa. Unfortunately, the castle it was in kind of got messed up in the last year and the old entrance probably isn’t there anymore. Fortunately, there is a portal to go back in time, conveniently located near the current entrance, which conveniently takes them back to some point in time between Part 3 and 4 (just before things got crazy…er.).
Party heads back into the familiar hole in the ground and makes it down into the second level. A clip show of their early adventures plays in their minds. The weird statue. Deathspike 2000. The vampire thing. The evil cup of evil. Finally, the fancy door with the scary description on it.
They quickly figure out the obvious riddle about the cup and drink from it, disappearing one at a time. But first they made sure to engage their magical protective measures against their foe (delay poison, protection from evil, etc.).
Party arrives in some kind of crazy dimensional prison. It’s reddish mostly. Also there’s a lot of lava and ruined ancient buildings and pillars. The medusa taunts the party from an unknown location.
Unable to detect her evilness or magicosity, Elbion magically bounds around to a high point near a bridge over the lava. Nolan tries to follow. Felix and Malcolm stay still.
Medusa shoots Nolan with a poisoned arrow, but disappears somehow, probably through some kind of portal. Felix knows of a way to do such a thing: dimension door. But this being somehow managed to perform this magic seemingly at will. This would be a truely annoying opponent.
Elbion manages to catch the medusa in his evil-dar, tells Felix she’s behind him. Felix fires off a lightning bolt behind his back, heavily burning the medusa, which seems to disappear again.
Nolan decides to move away from the others to improve the party’s chance to catch the medusa’s random movements. He then summons a small fire elemental (who enjoys the lava).
Medusa reappears right behind Nolan, but doesn’t manage to catch him with her gaze. Elbion spots her with evildar and starts to charge on his horse. The medusa shifts to atop one of the pillars.
Felix summons a phantasmal killer, which leads the medusa to see her greatest fear: seeing herself. The medusa then somehow turns herself to stone, having seen a medusa’s face.

The party doesn’t really know what to do at this point. There are many of the medusa’s past victims standing around. Party goes ahead and breaks apart the more evil-looking ones and throws them into the lava.
They have the ability to bring 2 of the statues back to life. They have 3 candidates to choose from: a dwarf adventurer, a human soldier, a mage, and Admiral Ackbar.

They decide they could use a good miliary leader with an eye for detecting trickery for their nearby fort, so they decide to free the Admiral.
Except then they realize that it’s not a Mon Calimari, but instead a Mind Flayer. So they smash it.

So instead, they tie up the soldier and remove his curse/enchantment. He immediately moves to fight… but is tied up. Then he realizes that the medusa is gone.
It turns out that this guy was the captain of something in the old castle. Captain Nathan Ryngar. From before it was ruins. Apparently from not long before its destruction, as they were already preparing for a confrontation with the Dark Lord.
Elbion and Malcolm try to explain current Willowfields political situation to him. After realizing this probably isn’t the best idea, they instead decide to put him in charge of building up troops at Fort Scatterhawk.
He has much interesting information. Something about how the Dark Lord wants to destroy everything. If it really is hundreds or thousands of year after his time, then the Dark Lord must have been defeated, because otherwise existence woudn’t currently exist.
They knew a lot more about magic back then, apparently. His sword has some kind of runic symbol on it. He is clearly a Fighter, but has some arcane ability to augment his physcial power, but in a way somehow different from Felix’s Eldritch Knightery.
There was an order of people with the same Marks of Iomedae as the heroes. There were many of them. They were very powerful. Then they just left to go attack the Dark Lord. (After which he probably mass-teleported his army past them and easily took the castle.)
Captain Nathan R. had gone on a one-way mission to kill the medusa in her dimensional prison because the Dark Lord apparently had a way to break her out. He failed, obviously. So did the Dark Lord, though, apparently, probably.

The captain doesn’t recognize the mage or the dwarf. The party decides to free the dwarf, as wizards/sorcerors can often turn out to be tricky (Felix doesn’t argue).
The dwarf (Gruff) is a barbarian adventurer who had come to raid the famous medusa’s treasure. He had come with a wizard who had a plan to escape from the prison. Of course, he had no idea what it was, but there was definitely a way out.
He had been there for an unknown amount of time. Maybe years, maybe centuries. It doesn’t really matter, a dwarf barbarian is a dwarf barbarian (usually).

Everyone looks for a way out. Felix flies up a few miles and reaches was seems to be the edge of the dimension. He then tries to dispel the magic keeping him in. He somehow succeeds in dispelling some kind of alternative imprisonment spell.
Everyone still alive winds up in the 10×10 room with the alter and cup. After some awkward jostling, everyone makes their way back outside.

Someone has an urge to go check out Fort Scatterhawk, but Nathan reminds them of the dangers of time-travel paradoxes.

Party heads back to Willowfields to see if anything interesting has happened yet.
Captain Nathan will begin recruiting people to his new elite forces unit in preparation for the coming war. Gruff will hang out around the fort and join the party, for an even share of loot, of course.

For about a week, party gathers information in Willowfields. (Add information later?)
Uses some of their influence to get supplies sent to Embers in hopes to strengthen it. (With enough help, it may become a large bonfire.)
Malcolm pisses off Bishop.
Elbion enters jousting tournament. Wins easily, defeating the Brown Knight in the finals in just one pass. Dedicates to Duke.

......Session break…...
1/11:
Party leaves for the ruins. It is cold. Probably for several days.
Early morning: 2 shades attack during Nolan’s watch. Shades manage to sap most of Elbion’s strength. He’ll need a few days to completely recover. Until then, he’s just a dude on a sweet horse.

1/12:
Party enters hilly forest area.
Party comes across an destroyed village. Meets a Haunt. After some investigating, they bury a bunch of dead people, putting the haunt to rest.

1/13:
Party enters an area with time dilation. Felix figures it out before much time is wasted. For several miles, along the direct route to the ruins, time passes 24 times slower inside the area (so it feels like 1 hour inside, but outside 1 day passes). Party goes around the field to the west.
Party gets to Fort Scatterhawk. It has stone walls now. It is fairly permanent, well-defended. A nice place to stop at when adventuring in the ruins.

The ruins are different. They look kind of like a colliseum now. Also there are several portals visible. Party spots a portal to the 5th level (5H), enters. Portal disappears (it’s one-way, possibly single-use!).
Felix learned of the dungeon lord there back in town. It is a Hellhound. [name] the Ancient. It has a few levels in fighter? and access to some spells.
This dungeon level is chaos-aligned and all creatures can phase.
Party attacked by 6 minotaurs phasing through the walls. Malcolm and Felix charm 2 of them, getting them to join the party’s side. Elbion kills a few and the friendly minotaurs help. Malcolm promises the friendlies some money for further help.
More minotaurs attack, no big deal.
Minotaurs tell Malcolm about the boss and another monster of interest.

Party goes to boss’s room. Hellhound is flaming. Fairly small room, wall of fire in the middle, and the hellhound can phase. Fun times. Elbion charges through the firewall and smites the boss dog thing. Party follows. Boss guy phases through floor/ceiling. Reappears on the other side of firewall, near Felix. It touches Felix; Felix becomes slightly stupid. Nolan throws a thunderstone, which unfortunately only affects Felix. Felix, stupid, can’t hear himself cast his spell, and fails. Finally, Elbion kills it.
Malcolm gets the friendly phasing minotaurs to fight each other then gets the party to finish off the winner.

Malcolm seemingly randomly disappears in a lightning bolt. (Teleported away?) [nwe session: player absent]
Party moves on after realizing Malcolm is probably safe.

......Session break…...

Enters barghest’s room. Only it’s a greater barghest, apparently. After some ceiling-walking, phasing, blinking fun, Felix hits it with a glitterdust. Still on the ceiling, it is out of range of Elbion’s smiting. So instead Nolan and Felix do their shooting and blasting acts.

Party starts to rest for the night. After several hours, a celestial lion enters the room. After the standard Paladin-meets-intelligent celestial animal conversation, it and Elbion come to an agreement. The lion (and friends) will guard the party for the night. It also gives the party some good scouting of this part of the level.

In the next room, there is a pedestal with treasure on it. Also probably an obvious trap. Nolan Detects Pits and Traps, but there are none. There are, however, pressure plates and tons of arrow slits at the tops of the walls. Party throws the greater barghest body into the room. Tons of arrows shoot out for a while. Trap seems to reset. Felix Mage Hands some of the smaller treasure out of the room. With only the pressure plates causing the arrows, Nolan creates a protected path to the treasure using a Wall of Wind.
Back in the barghest room, Nolan spots a pit trap at the most interesting of the remaining 2 doors. After avoiding it, the party sees a path to a lower level of the dungeon (6H).

Felix scouts the next level with his Arcane Eye.
There are a few issues. Specifically, gravity is subjective and reality is easily warpable here. Felix’s mind finds what is clearly the lord of this level, a rich athatch. There’s also a looping hallway, apparently.

Party heads directly for the athatch’s prison room. Nolan walks on the ceiling.
Elbion wills the wall of the athatch’s room out of existence, charges on his horse for massive damage.
Athatch swings back with its chains that are on fire apparently. Also, it is scary, so Nolan and Felix run away, down a hallway which magically loops back from the other side with a total length of about 80 feet.
Elbion’s horse gets scared, so he gets off and continues fighting on foot.
Athatch wills an iron box around Elbion.
Felix: Mentally wills into being a spike pit beneath Goretusk the Horrible
Goretusk: Reorients his gravity to “up”
Elbion: Mentally wills into being a spike pit above Goretusk the Horrible
Goretusk: Mentally wills all surfaces into spike pits.
Elbion: ::cancels his own subjective gravity::
Felix: ::casts _feather fall::
Nolan: ::panicking wildly spirals wildly out of control::
Elbion reaches out to his horse telepathically; Horse wills the iron box away.
Felix scorches the athatch, Elbion keeps trying to hack at it.
Elbion finishes hacking away at the athatch. Party wills away all the spikes, makes the room normal-ish again. Gets tons of sweet loot, heads back to the room they camped out the previous night in.

Next time on DragonQuest:
While resting, Elbion daydreams. In his dream, he is moving between a pair of portals. One goes to Felix and Nolan’s location. From the other appears Malcolm, who had somehow spent the last half a day at Fort Scatterhawk. Malcolm explains his theory on what happened (some kind of arcane wizardry nonsense and such) and tries to warn Elbion to tighten his stomach before exitting. Unfortunately, before the warning message is complete, Elbion awakens in Fort Scatterhawk, in Malcolm’s bed, with brown pants.

Party hangs out around town for a year

After the explosion of the Mage Tower, a lot of work was needed to move an entire village hundreds of miles to the nearest known city.

A farmer? stumbles into a bar and says, “Bartender, bring me a drink. Also, I’m dying from a dragon attack and wandered for weeks to get here and I’m dying now. Also, bring me an adventuring party.” The bartender says, “Sorry, we don’t serve your kind here.” The farmer asks, with his dying breath, “My kind?” and dies. The bartender says, “Yes, the dead.”

Next day, party takes off at full speed on summoned horses. Unfortunately, there’s a canyon in the way. Not wanting to risk falling to their doom, party walks around. Finds the mountain, but can’t find a way up to the cave entrance. Falls into a small clearing with 2 cave bears. After some pain, party kills bears and moves on.

In the cave: fire. Fire sinks, flame spikers, magma claws. Takes a while, and some intense moments, but eventually the entrance is cleared.
Next room, there are flame snakes and flame spikers. Flame snakes shoot fireballs, which hurt. Party wins, goes home, as they’re tired and bored and red dragons are deadly.

Arcane fire and lightning at the tower. There was some polite, shady dude who went there just before it started. Hear about the Nexus Crystal and the Chamber of Worlds, yet have no idea what either is. Let’s go check it out.

2 large earth elementals + a crazy storm at the entrance. Party is much more afraid of the golems than they should be. Kill them and proceed inside.

Inside, all doors are closed except the very top.
There is a portal. Party goes through.

Party finds complex puzzle that they want to achieve total perfection on. After awhile Felix convinces Nolan to give up and move on. Party moves on.

There are 3 barriers. “5”, “4”, and “3”. We determine they are barriers of reality, time, and space.

#1 – Heading into “5” takes party to non-civilized Willowfields. A t-rex is eating something. Felix can shift party to another “5”. Has problems, but gets out just before the t-rex is going to notice the party and Nolan’s tree climbing puts him out of range.
#2 – It is peaceful. Near Irori. Malcolm picks a flower. Party moves on.
#3 – Same location. But everything is ice. Party has endure elements on so the don’t freeze to death instantly. Party moves on.
#4 – Large town. Near armorsmith. Meets Reth. Get buffs, a piece of junk (+3 shortsword), and non-sentient armor upgraded to mithrale(sp?), + dex cap.
#5 – Same reality and location as #2. Malcolm interacts with a woman nearby. Free food. There are no weapons here. Everything is peaceful, nothing is wrong. Malcolm wants to stay forever. Felix spellcrafts reality and shifts party.
#6 – In the mountains near dwarfland. Nothing interesting here that they could tell. (Actually, everything was opposite in this reality.)
#7 – Willowfields, but with no magic. At all. Party has an adventure here. Almost attracts too much attention from the temple+guards, but manages to get away. Somehow escapes outside the city after Malcolm creates this reality’s darklord by unknowingly giving a crazy old bitch (really this time) the most powerful spell ever.
#8 – Party is ghosts, in Iestia. Magic is back. Travels to tower, touches the nexus crystal, which destroys the first barrier. Oh, did we mention this was their original reality?

Party back in the original room. Touches “4” barrier.

Nolan sent back in time. Malcolm sent to future. Felix sent to… um… somewhere in between? Where the crystal actually exists. Malcolm learns of potential future (darkness, destruction, and dragons fighting dragons). Nolan adventures for a few years and learns some history, venturing to everywhere but the town of elves. Nolan spends the rest of his years bringing rocks into the tower for Felix to use. Malcolm sends his intelligent armor back in time using an altar to figure out what’s going on. Felix realizes he doesn’t need our help and melts the steel around the crystal with acid splash and flies up to it. Party reunited, remembers their experiences, but no older or deader.

Nolan’s history lesson:
Nolan was sent to the time during the conversion of the Golden Plains to the Tombs.
At this time, the Ruins near Willowfields were already ruins. Iestia had not yet been founded by the elves and the dwarven tunnels had not yet extended to the region. Firewatch was not very different (it was untouched by the Dark Lord, apparently). The Abyss had not yet opened.

Back to main room. Enters “3” barrier.
Each party member is in his own room with 3-5 portal each. We individually work our way through the maze, Felix leaving arcane marks indicating his direction, Malcolm simply writing numbers on the floor to remember where he’s been, and Nolan randomly throwing arrows through doors just to get rid of them. Eventually, everyone makes it to the end of the maze.

Having dispelled the three fields around the crystal, party touches it and enters elemental chaos island with floating island in the center they can’t get to. Big grumpy rock guy seems like he should be helpful but isn’t. Party searches for someone/something to help figure out what to do. Wind guy is pissed off. Column of lava and ice wall seem potentially useful but party doesn’t want to destroy them for no reason. They try rock-man again, who gets pissed and throws his bottle at party, which allows them to accidentally figure out what to do. Combining the forces of nature Captain Planet-style, party creates bridge to evil sorcerer and crystal. Nolan makes so many attacks it almost seems like he’s not following the rules. Felix and Malcolm try to break the will of the half-dragon sorcerer but fail. After a short time he is slain. But it’s too late.
Or was it?

The crystal changed from blue to darkish. Also starts doing weird stuff, like flashing or pulsing? Party realizes the singularity is about to explode. Returns to Iestia through a dangerous firey path similar to the AggroCrag from GUTS. Save the remainder of the townsfolk, who are now so depressed they don’t even want to move. Malcolm sings to them while Nolan finds them food.

After a brief mourning period and some Mage Hand experiments on the fountain’s water, party enters fountain room. All the centipedes come together to form a giant centipede shape. Elbion cuts it in half, resulting in 2 large centipede shapes of centipedes. Then he cuts one of these in half, resulting in smaller centipedes. Kal and Fletcher throw acid flasks at the centipedes, resulting in even more smaller centipede shapes made of many centipedes. Medium centipede shapes shoot centipede arm shapes at the party. Elbion cuts medium centipedes in half, creating smaller medium centipedes. Kal throws more acid. Fletcher smashes small centipede shape with mace. Centipedes shoot at the party again, knocking out Kal and Fletcher. Elbion heals Kal. Kal heals Fletcher. Fletcher smashes more centipedes with mace. Elbion bashes the rest to death with his glowing shield. All other centipedes in the dungeon also die.

Party finds a fighter?/barbarian? named Deacon in the fountain. He has amnesia, which is convenient, maybe.

Party comes across some various traps which shoot out gems and gets bored, kind of. Party heads back to Redbow, buries Caleb (Felix’s quarter-elf son). Elbion says he doesn’t want to tell Felix about his son’s death.

Party meets “Old Crazy Bitch” who can’t find her son. Elbion listens for a little but then tells her off because she’s stupid for trying to be a farmer in a demon-infested land. Party receives quest to go to the undead marsh where Old Redbow was located. On the way, Fletcher wants the party to cut through the Blood Spider’s woods. Everyone thinks this is a [b]bad idea[/b].

Blood Spider (vampiric spider) drains levels from Kaleb and Deacon before Elbion can smite the crap out of it. Elbion follows it until he is able truly kill it with holiness or something. Then K+D’s bodies are burned so they don’t come back later. Fletcher wonders why Deacon was even given a name.

Due to the multiple meaningless deaths in the party, the party is disbanded. Elbion decides to rejoin the A-Team (with a lot of expensive gems). Fletcher retires from adventuring, rejoins the Firewatch Guard, and takes a level in Cleric.

Elbion + noobs vs. centipedes

Back in July, Elbion meets Firewatch recruits Cal, Kal, Fletch. Coincidentally, all are related to his normal companions in some way.

After getting some information, party goes to the Redbow region.

Redbow is gone, survivors rebuilding.
Party finds ranger cabin, gets map. There is a red dragon area in the mountains nearby. An undead swamp? in the west. Forest in the middle. Portal to the Abyss in the south.

Party falls camps in a bunch of happytime mushrooms. Ckal and Elbion have to drag the others away before everyone dies of literally doing nothing (like eating) for a few days.

Party enters portal, finds and kills dozens of centipedes of various sizes, finds tons of gems.

There is one incident of note, however. (CK)al falls in a pit trap. (KC)al) jumps over it to fight a demon on the other side. Elbion tries to jump over and falls in on top of (KC)al, basically killing him. Fortunately other ckal stuns the demon for long enough to let them out of the hole.

Party finds the stairs to all 3 floors. All doors are iron, some are locked. (Pause button pushed.)

Fletch recommends heading to the 3rd level of the Maze of the Mad Overlord to kill the boss there. Kal seconds. Time paradox ensues, Dark Lord is never born, but unfortunately, existence never exists.

Or The Adventures of Felix the Evil, Malcolm the Mad, and Nolan, Master of Trolls

After some trading and training, Felix, Malcolm, and Nolan decide to head to the Maze of the Overlord while they wait for Elbion to return from Firewatch(?).

They ask around town for a few days to obtain some much needed scrolls and information about the maze. Feeling prepared, they head down a road of always-green foliage and make their way into the tower.

After ascending a set of platinum stairs (which are impervious to CHUNKING), the party arrives at a wooden closed door with a runic pattern. After realizing the puzzle on the door was impossible, a combination of Felix’s arcane knowledge and Malcolm+Nolan’s ability to disable devices, the party is able to switch some tiles and solve the puzzle.

They arrive in a room that appears to be some kind of study. After inspecting the window, the telescope, and a map on the wall, the party locates a few magic items of interest, and more importantly, a pedestal containing a riddle. They solve the riddle, touch the map on the wall, and descend into the ever-shifting maze.

Curiosity gets the best of the party as they see a set of barrels. Malcolm and Felix luck out and get cash/nothing; however, Nolan gets sprayed in the face with a magical mist. Fortunately he forgot to breathe at that time and his fortitude kept him from harm.

Party proceeds through the maze, using Felix’s arcane mark to keep track of where they’ve been and what directions they’ve taken at each intersection.

Party finds a troll doll. Nolan touches it. Doll turns into supertank which joins the party after a few awkward tense moments.

Party finds human foot in a boot. The boot is nomal. The foot is dead.

Party ambushed by 3 darkmantles. Stabbing and clawing works.

Party goes through the red stargate which drops them into the real dungeon. Air elementals attack. Air elementals suck.

There are several doors: one open, one is a large grate, the other are closed.

Party finds out the 2 south-most doors loop around and connect to each other. Other eastern door leads to a hidden wallbox with a lamp inside.

Lamp appears magical but nobody can figure out what it does.

Felix decides he isn’t smart anymore, and touches the Lamp.

1337 genie pops out and wants to kill us all.

Malcolm quickly talks him down into just hating us instead of stabbing us.

Felix then impresses to the Genie just how much of an idiot he is by telling him letting him out was totally an accident and that the Genie should be happy. This is when Felix stops talking and lets Malcolm take over conversation again. It is fortuitous for the party.

Malcolm distracts the genie so the party can get a surprise round. Party wails into genie because trolls and surprise are sweet. Felix makes the party move faster with his evil bonus power. Nolan shoots 72 arrows into the Genie, dropping him within an inch of its life.

Genie totally offers the party a Wish. We take it. Malcolm is now as awesome as the rest of the party (though Felix still regrets not wishing for the treasure horde of the White Dragon).

Awesome victory music plays.

Genie had a sweet Scimitar that was missing a gem. Felix uses magic to triangulate the position of the gem that will complete the Scimitar. This is largely useless as mapping mazes in a non-grid like system is horribly inaccurate.

Party continues exploring the maze to head in the general direction of Gem.

Party finds secret passage that eventually takes them to a room an animated stone. Party kills stone and finds boxes of food and a pool of water. Confused, they leave.

Party enters room with skull sconces. Nolan tells Malcolm to leave and Malcolm rebels, lighting the sconces. Malcolm mis-answers riddle and gets turned permanently insane. Nolan and Felix take all his belongings so he doesn’t kill himself or one of them. The ‘permanent’ effect fortunately only lasts 6 rounds thanks to a random wand they found earlier, which allows Malcolm is able to make extra saves (in addition to punching himself in the face and babbling incoherently) and recover.

Party finds room with animated rug. Felix burns it.

Party finds unlit sconce and some kind of altar to Sarenrae. Malcolm is now afraid of lighting sconces so he encourages overconfident ranger to light it instead. Nolan lights it. Party is blessed.

Continuing on the quest for the ruby, party enters scary room with bones and a coffin. Malcolm wants to leave, Felix formulates a plan for the troll to open the coffin, but in the meantime, Nolan gets bored and decides to run in and open it himself. Coffin explodes. Epic battle ensues with scary floating flaming skeleton and minions. Felix and Malcolm fail knowledge checks so they know nothing about the being. Skeletor keeps raising up the minions the party kills, so party focuses on killing Skeletor. They do. He comes back to life. Party works on killing him again while Felix fireballs many of the minions back to death. Nolan makes his troll immune to fire, which is one of the best things that could ever happen to any troll. Skeletor is killed again, this time his head crushed and the ruby from his head taken. Unfortunately he comes back to life.

Party has no idea how to kill Skeletor. However, Felix uses random magic book we found earlier to get a +5 bonus to his knowledge check and allow him a new check against the skeleton. Felix finds out positive energy is required to kill it permanently. Party misses Elbion. After a few tactical troll blows, Malcolm cures moderate wounds on Skeletor, sending him back to hell.

Felix puts ruby in Magical Genie Scimitar, it becomes better, but we’re not sure how yet because Felix wants the frost staff legacy weapon as opposed to scimitar, though they are all appealing.

Party returns to main room and realizes the portal is 50 feet above them. They stand around confused, debating whether to settle down in the dungeon and start a family since they have no way how to leave. However, divine inspiration reveals the portal is a stargate, so Nolan commands his troll to throw a grappling hook to ‘catch’ in the portal itself. Success. Party leaves.

up to 6/3: Elbion has been learning about the Ruins. A white dragon roams around level 3, collection bribes from all who seek to move through its level.

6/3: Malcolm leaves (presumably to Willowfields, possibly also on to Iestia).
Albion returns.

Nolan issues a tornado warning in the next 5-10 minutes. Horses sent away by Elbion. Felix makes a rope ladder to put in the well inside the fort. Nolan shares his tornado safety knowledge with everyone. As the tornado appoaches and everyone is inside the well, Elbion prays for Iomedae’s protection.
One civilian worker (Ger’win) dies from the turbulence in the well, a few more pass out.
As the tornado starts to move away from the fort, Elbion almost gets sucked out the top of the well, but Felix grabs him and pulls him back in (but only thanks to Felix’s deal with a demon).
Elbion vows revenge on Nature.
Tornado wipes out almost half of the fort. Just enough supplies were leftover to repair to normal, but the fort is now out of supplies.
As Nolan goes out to get the horses back, Felix and Elbion discuss something (Felix’s deal). Felix must release a demon from somewhere. Remember the Elbion Blood Room in the first level of the Ruins? Yeah… Felix must release it, or he will quickly weaken over the next several days.

Party + mercs + HG7 go to the evil painting room for the first time since January.
Felix: “We need a little blood from one who is Good to release it.”
Elbion: “Don’t look at me, I’m a paladin.”
Nolan: “Screw you, elf!”
Felix: “Come on… Come on…” (Nolan: Dude, what about our lawful good merc?)
Nolan: “Fine, you did almost drown yourself for us a few days ago…”
Nolan drops some blood on the circle in the middle of the room. The painting kind of shatters.

A Shadow Demon possesses Felix. The others basically murder him, though Elbion ensures his survival (barely). SD leaves his body and floats above Felix. Nolan dramatically throws his longbbow into the corner and charges at the shadowy cloud, but can’t hit it. Everyone watches as Elbion tries to smite the demon but misses with his attack.
SD teleports down the hall (in front of the entrance to the blood room). Nolan goes and picks his bow back up. Elbion runs to the demon (floating near the ceiling), makes an incredible leap into the air in full plate armor, and smites the demon in the chest, leaving the demon incapable of concealing itself in darkness (what with all the light shooting out). The mercs help to corner the demon.
SD does something really scary, causing all those near him, even The Paladin, to flee in terror, dropping their weapons, leaving only Crome’ and Nolan to fight it unless they should happen to come back to their senses and end a runon sentence.
Crome’ drags Felix’s body to the library room where everyone else had just fleed to. Nolan heads in the same direction, stopping just outside the doorway and fires The Sleep Arrow (from Part 2-1) at the demon but misses (it was not destroyed).
SD launches a giant dark ball of flame at Nolan. Nolan realizes the the darkness was an illusion, but the fire still hurts a little. Nolan rapidly fires 2 arrows and amazingly shoots off an extra one, hitting the demon with the first two, harming the demon thanks to the holy pendant/Headband? (From Part 2-1/2).
SD charges at Nolan and launches a vicious attack, nearly knocking him out. Nolan, realizing he can’t take on the demon himself, steps back into the library behind him, slamming the door in the demon’s face.

(Meanwhile, in Felix’s unconscious brain.)
SD and Felix make a deal. Felix owes the demon’s boss a favor at a later time. Felix and one other party member (Elbion) will be allowed to survive.

(Back in reality.)
SD teleports into the library, immediately behind Nolan. Nolan decides to stand his ground, trying to avoiding getting gruesomely killed, hopefully long enough to rally the others. HG7 runs over to Elbion and grabs a healing potion from his bag.
SD attacks Nolan again, knocking him out, but not immediately killing him. HG7 uses the healing potion on Nolan, who becomes barely conscious. Nolan decides to stay down but try to avoid the demon’s attacks.
SD attacks Nolan again, knocking him out again, but once again failing to immediately kill him.
The rest of the group, rallied by Crome’ and Nolan’s last stands, rally and make one final charge at the demon. Elbion, leading the way as always, pulls out his dagger and smitabs the demon in the face, making it explode in light, ending its curse on the Blood Room.
Elbion partially heals Felix (of the wounds that Elbion himself inflicted) and Nolan (of the wounds Elbion would have taken had he not ran in fear).
Nolan begins referring to himself as “The Kite”. People do not get to decide their own nicknames.
They find a lot of money and gems. Also, Felix now has a demon brand and has claws now, thanks to his useless deal.

Party splits up, heads off to their favored training towns, arriving around 6/26. The Scouts (7/14) are finished long before the others (8/12), but will likely need to travel longer before their next adventure.

The party gets high and satisfies its primal urges

[George wrote down way more info but I figured I’d share the burden of adventure logging and we can switch off. George- feel free to edit and add the relevant in-game dates. Also, be warned that my commentary inherently degraded/upgraded itself into Georgespeak due to all the other logs being written in that style.]

While Elbion ventures off into the woods on a spiritual retreat, Nolan, Felix, and Malcolm try to figure out what to do in the meantime. As they’re discussing options, a group of primal humanoids approach Fort Scatterhawk bearing a white flag.

Felix rides out to meet them, followed closely by Nolan and Malcolm. After discussions and deliberations (which fortunately didn’t involve Elb who would probably have really pissed them off), party learns much of the Green Circle. They are a spiritual group of mostly human (but a few elves and half-elves) primal beings, including druids, barbarians, and the like. Their leader/archdruid Suehanna calmly asks the party to take down the fort and leave. After some lying and diplomacizing, party brokers a deal: come with the Green Circle to face the trials of their spirit gods, or within three months, dismantle the fort and leave the land.

Party remains indecisive. Suehanna says she’ll send a messenger every day for three months in case we decide to face the trials. Party decides to think about it and discusses heading into the ruins instead so Felix can get a better look at the mirror.

Recalling that the entire dungeon is cursed, Felix suggests party heads to town to get a scroll of remove curse. Malcolm agrees so he can scope out the town and potentially steal one of their magic items… believing that since Nolan’s brother owes money to someone there, Nolan may help him in his heist.

Nolan decides to locate the guy who his brother owes money to. Turns out it’s an elf paladin who was tricked by Nolan’s brother who sold him a poorly-made bow. Paladin realizes Nolan is an ally of Elb, who has been doing good things in the ruins. Regarding the debt, he says it’s about the principle, not the money, so Nolan can repay this debt by slaying Medusa and bringing proof. Malcolm hears of this and realizes his heist plan will not work unless one of the magic-item holders is outright evil or breaking the law.

Party scopes out shops. First has +1 studded leather and is a shady rogue’s shop in the ghetto. Second is a scary tiefling’s magic shop, which possesses a two handed sword. And finally, a respectable dwarf’s general store, where he shows off his pearl of power.

Despite there being no good candidates for thievery, the trip isn’t a total loss as Felix finds his Scroll of Remove Curse with the dwarf.

Party stays the night in the town. Felix tries to study in a crowded tavern where Nolan gets drunk. Malcolm tries to steal audience members from the tavern bard by singing loudly just outside. Bard off ensues. Malcolm wins, his catchy tune about Nolan granting the ranger some fame, and giving Felix a quiet place to study as all the tavern-goers have gone outside for the concert. Barkeep contracts Malcolm as a stage performer for the evening. Felix now knows so much about the medusa, he could very well be her father and/or lover.

Party debates trading which will lead to great profit. However, seeking experience as well, party heads back to the Fort. They decide to wait to go back into the dungeon to scope out the mirror since Elb has their only map. Instead they meet the messenger, who turns out to be a bird. Nolan forgets how to animal empathize. Felix does not.

After a storm, a barbarian crew shows up to escort party to the secret location of the Green Circle. Blindfolded and defenseless, the party makes the three-day journey there, where they meet Suehanna once again. She briefly describes the trial, saying that the party needs to pass the test of Earth and obtain the blessings of air, fire, and water.

Party enters veil of the spirits. See a small cave. Felix uses linguistics to conveniently figure out every other symbol in the puzzle. We grow/smoke weed and paradoxically stop hallucinating.

We see six caves and a beautiful waterfall:
Cave 1: Scary dire wolf. Nolan wins initiative and macks his animal empathy check. Wolf no longer cares about eating us. We move on.
Cave 2: Appears empty. Nolan searches extensively and finds a scroll.
Cave 3: Magical natural wind. Tells us a riddle. Malcolm solves it. We get blessing of air.
Cave 4: Naturally magical fire. Tells us a riddle in a confusing accent. Malcolm is confused. Nolan and Felix solve it. We get blessing of fire.
Cave 5: Pool of water tells us to commit suicide. We move on.
Cave 6: Blank altar that does nothing. We surmise that we need the third blessing, so we go back to cave 5.
Cave 5: Felix drowns himself. We pull him out and he’s magically revived. We get blessing of water.
Cave 6: Blessings activate alter. Like a slot machine, it spits out tons of loot. The peasants rejoice.

Having succeeded in the trial, we leave the veil. Suehanna is impressed. Party gains allegiance with the Green Circle, who tells us we can keep our fort.